by Tom
Shepherd
Copyright Ó 2010
Author Tom Shepherd is a native of Joplin, Missouri. He is an
alumnus of the School of Philosophy and Letters of Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México in Mexico City, of the University of Oklahoma, and of
several colleges and institutes in California and New York.
Shepherd is the founder and chancellor of the worldwide online Shepherd-Montessori Institute and the founder of
Tom
Blaise Shepherd Existential Society of America.
Shepherd is also the author of The Artificial Man, A Brief History of Israel and Palestine,
Weaving the Web of Schizophrenia, The Crime of Psychiatry, and Sex
and Sanity: The Myths and Realities of Human Sexuality.
Individuals
who have sustained early childhood injury to the hypothalamus, a key neural
structure at the base of the brain which regulates emotion and motivation, are conjectured
to have increased difficulty in modulating their behavior as adults, especially
when under the influence of a wide variety of mood-altering drugs, to include
alcoholic beverages, caffeine and hallucinogens.
Such
individuals tend to either under-react or over-react to trauma, to threats, to
noise or to other forms of environmental stimuli. Damage to this section of the
brain may be the underlying cause of schizophrenia, of bipolar disorder, of
post traumatic stress disorder and of psychomotor epilepsy.
Such
individuals have a tendency to split off, as it were, especially when
under the influence of even light to moderate amounts of alcoholic beverages,
caffeine products and other psychoactive drugs.
Interestingly,
in 1970 Yale Law School professor Charles Reich published bestseller The
Greening of America, in which he advocates the use hallucinogenic drugs,
namely LSD and marijuana, to “restore a dull consciousness.”
Hallucinogens
do not restore a dull consciousness. They in fact induce delusions –
psychotic behavior – schizophrenic behavior.
For
an individual already suffering from schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder,
bipolar disorder or PTSD, the use of any psychoactive drug, to include
alcoholic beverages, caffeine products, neuroleptics, anti-depressants and
hallucinogenic drugs, can be disastrous.
The
alcoholic beverage industry spends more money than any other industry on
advertising – false advertising – advertising that suggests drinking alcoholic
beverages is both healthy and sophisticated. One cannot turn on a televised
sporting event without being subjected to repeat advertising promoting
alcoholic beverages of one kind or another – most typically wine, beer or
whiskey advertising.
The
caffeine industry runs a close second, promoting coffee, tea, caffeinated soda
drinks, as well as caffeinated energy drinks. Moderate amounts of caffeine
(four or more cups of coffee) can produce psychosis – namely extreme paranoia
and out-of-control hypomanic behavior.
The
pharmaceutical industry runs a close third, promoting antidepressants,
neuroleptics, etc.
Mix
any of the above chemicals, and you have for yourself a Molotov cocktail of
sorts – a prescription for insanity and possible life imprisonment in a padded
jail cell.
The purpose of this book is
to present a method for curtailing alcohol dependency, nicotine dependency,
caffeine dependency, cocaine dependency, marijuana dependency, amphetamine
dependency, unsound nutritional habits, and sexual promiscuity.
The
method presented is an alternative to psychiatry, to religion, and to
traditional twelve-step programs, which programs in my opinion only reinforce
negative and fatalistic concepts about one’s self that paradoxically inhibit
rather than facilitate the curtailment of self-defeating habits.
To
begin, it is suggested that you simply delete the phrases I am an
alcoholic and/or I am an addict from your vocabulary. If you are
currently active in a twelve-step program, I suggest that you simply declare
yourself to be allergic to all psychoactive drugs during meetings, rather
than burden yourself with self-defeating terminology.
The
fact is that if you have a tendency to split off, as it were, while consuming
alcoholic beverages, caffeine and hallucinogenic drugs, you most probably have
suffered hypothalamus damage – brain damage – early-on in life, if not
congenitally.
You
may have suffered brain injury as a result of anesthesia administered to your
mother during childbirth or administered to you during a minor surgical
procedure, such as a tonsillectomy prior to your ever having ingested alcohol,
caffeine or any other psychoactive drugs.
I
myself most probably suffered brain damage at birth, believed to have been
caused by a high fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit that I ran at the age of six
months, requiring the puncturing of my ear drums by my physician and
exacerbated by the anesthesia (ether) used when I underwent a tonsillectomy at
the age of four and another minor surgical procedure at the age of eight.
If you suffer from a brain condition known
as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, like anyone suffering from schizophrenia
or bipolar disorder, psychoactive drugs, including alcohol, caffeine and
hallucinogenic drugs only further impair one’s ability to exercise control over
one’s emotions and to modulate one’s behavior.
Alcoholic
beverages cloud everyone’s thinking and everyone’s physical coordination.
People develop the habit of using psychoactive drugs as a result of being
exposed to advertisements that falsely promote the use of alcoholic
beverages, tobacco, caffeine and other psychoactive drugs as a healthy experience.
The
manufacturers and distributors of alcoholic beverages, tobacco products,
caffeine products, hallucinogens and other psychoactive drugs are not
interested in anyone’s health, nor are they interested in the welfare of any
consumer – they are primarily interested in their own profits.
Although most
people identify themselves as either left handed or right handed, the fact is
that virtually all of people are ambidextrous. It is my belief that all of
people are intrinsically ambisexual. However, if they’re smart they practice
celibacy.
For the purpose
of freeing yourself from compulsive, risky and dysfunctional sexual behavior,
it is suggested that you heretofore avoid labeling either yourself or anyone
else as either straight or gay, as it is my existential point of
view that virtually all people have an inborn and socially conditioned capacity
for responding to a variety of sexual stimuli and for developing romantic
feelings for people of the same sex, as well as for people of the opposite sex.
No one is born morally straight; nor
is anyone born gay. As a matter of fact, the term gay, coined by
the French, refers to any man or woman who engages in out-of-wedlock sex,
whether with a partner of the same sex or one of the opposite sex.
As
I have conjectured, all people have a capacity for developing romantic feelings
for people of both sexes, although most people are taught to adamantly
deny that they experience romantic feelings for others of the same sex in order
to avoid being humiliated and castigated by society.
There
most likely is no adult individual on the face of planet Earth that has not
experienced romantic feelings for another individual of the same sex. Those who
claim otherwise are lying to themselves and to you!
Twelve-step
programs are modeled on a set of conflicting points of view:
(a) The formal recognition of an
invisible supernatural entity known either as God or The Higher
Power as the ultimate authority, although the group conscience (mob
rule) is also recognized as the ultimate authority of twelve-step groups; (b)
Christianity’s moral model, which views alcoholism or addiction as an
individual moral weakness; and (c) The medical model or disease model,
which views the mere desire to consume alcoholic beverages or other
psychoactive drugs as a compulsive disorder or as a genetically-acquired
disease.
My
own method draws predominantly from the fields of humanistic and existential
psychology, from ideas fostered by Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Thomas Szasz and R.
D. Laing. All four men view so-called atypical human behavior as normative
rather than pathological.
Rogers
views religious dogma as often inhibitory in obtaining intellectual and
psychological freedom. Adler prefers to use the term discouragement in lieu
of the term clinical depression to describe people who have lost their
zest for living, and recommends a therapy based on hope and encouragement,
accentuating the positive, rather than one that focuses on Freudian pathology.
Szasz
and Laing view the term mental illness as an inappropriate Establishment term
used to describe individuals who are unable to accept the contradictory,
twisted and exploitative values of mainstream society. In fact, according to
Szasz, insanity does not exist.
Laing
advocates treating individuals who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia with
environmental (milieu) therapy in lieu of drug therapy.
Dysfunctional
behavior patterns are the result of damage to the hypothalamus of the brain,
often during infancy and/or as a result of having suffered extreme trauma –
physical and/or emotional – early on in life.
Changing
behavior necessitate understanding and analyzing the social infrastructure of
one’s own community, an infrastructure that may not be conductive to peace of
mind and sane living.
Schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder are mostly like caused by damage to the hypothalamus,
which impairs one’s ability to modulate one’s emotions when reacting to
negative social-environmental influences – loud noise, threats, insults, etc.
One’s
ability to modulate one’s emotions is greatly exacerbated while under the
influence of even low to moderate amounts of alcohol, caffeine, hallucinogens
or other psychoactive drugs.
Thus,
schizophrenic behavior and bipolar behavior are believed to be extremely
exacerbated by a variety of psychoactive drugs, to include alcohol, caffeine,
hallucinogens and even antidepressants and neuroleptics (so-called
antipsychotic medications).
Diphenhydramine
hydrochloride, market as Benadryl, Dytuss or under a number of other labels as
an over-the-counter anti-histamine or sleeping aid, is perhaps the safest
of the tranquilizing drugs, far safer than antidepressants, neuroleptics and
the most commonly used ‘mood stabilizers’ – Lithium, Depacote, Trileptal, etc.
Diphenhyramine can also safely lower blood pressure.
However,
adhering to (1) a modified vegertian diet – to include servings of poultry
breast and cold water fish; (2) a regular exercise routine and (3) practicing
quiet relaxation meditation while alone are perhaps the best way to stabilize
brain chemistry. By all means, avoid loud people, loud noise, and television if
you wish to have peace of mind.
Remember,
television scripts are designed to persuade viewers to engage in behavior that
is diametrically opposed to sane living. Ruthless competition, violence, vulgar
language, promiscuity and the promotion of alcoholic beverages and other brain
and body degenerative chemicals are the basics of television programming.
The
humanist-existentialist approach focuses on what is known as milieu therapy, to
include the practice of sound nutritional habits, rather than on drug therapy,
since the building blocks of the brain’s neurotransmitters are the vitamins,
minerals, fatty acids and amino acids found in food, not drugs, albeit a rather
radical departure from present-day mainstream psychiatry.
Milieu therapy emphasizes modifying one’s
lifestyle through the implementation of sound, healthy living habits – good nutrition,
regular exercise, sunshine and fresh air and mentally stimulating pastimes:
becoming more selective about one’s associates, one’s reading habits,
television viewing habits and methods of relaxation. Employing new techniques
for relaxation (e.g. transcendental meditation) is instrumental in freeing
one’s self from the pressures of daily living that give rise to high levels of
anxiety.
The
humanist-existentialist approach is centered on inner-directedness as opposed
to other-directedness—looking into one’s self for approval, rather than
depending on other people for approval. The humanist-existential approach can
be greatly facilitated by the removal of artificial dichotomies from your
thought processes in viewing human behavior: success/failure, well/sick,
weak/strong, straight/gay an normal/abnormal.
The
existentialist approach to understanding and changing human behavior draws from
a broad range of ideas formulated by a number of philosophers and
psychoanalysts from throughout Europe during the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries and in America during the Twentieth Century.
The
existentialist approach focuses on the dilemma of the individual who is unable
to find meaning in the traditional sociocultural institutions of society and
therefore feels isolated and alienated from society. Such an individual may
find life relatively meaningless. As a result of that perceived
meaninglessness, he may become discouraged and develop feelings of apathy,
perhaps expressing his apathy in self-defeating or self-destructive behavior,
including that of escape through alcohol or hallucinogenic drugs and
promiscuous sex.
Soren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher, considered by some to be the
father of existentialism, focused on man’s anxiety (his angst, a German
and Danish word). Anxiety, Kierkegaard conjectured, is necessary in order for
man to become human. Life is one contingency after another, with no guarantees
beyond the certainty of death.
The
uneasiness that man experiences in his daily attempts to grapple with life’s
problems is the basis of his anxiety. Although it is not a comfortable state,
it is nevertheless a necessary state on the pathway to becoming human – in his
effort to achieve a state of self-realization and ultimately feel fulfilled as
a human being.
Becoming
human is therefore a project in itself, and those who acquiesce – those who do
not accept life’s challenges, and thereby make their own decisions, do not
live. They, in effect, go through life as sleepwalkers, permitting others to
make their decisions for them or by becoming noncreative, nonproductive
recluses, sometimes escaping into alcohol dependency, hallucinogenic drug
dependency, sexual promiscuity or other self-defeating patterns of behavior.
Therefore,
anxiety is viewed by the existentialist as necessary for positive change.
However, the existentialist generally makes a distinction between what he terms
healthy (motivating) anxiety and unhealthy (self-defeating) anxiety.
Healthy
anxiety is an appropriate response to an event or problem being faced (today).
It therefore can become a primary motivating factor for positive, creative
change. Unhealthy anxiety is often conditioned by obsessions with past unresolved
situations or by the dread of imagined or unforeseen future possibilities of
holocausts.
Unhealthy
anxiety can be expressed through apathy, through self-destruction and/or
through hostile-aggressive acts against others.
The
existentialist realistically accepts death as final, believing it to be a waste
of his time and energy to conjecture about an afterlife.
The
existentialist’s focus is on today, drawing from past experiences only as they
relate to solving today’s projects, and focusing on the future only as it
provides a perspective for making responsible, positive and logical choices
today.
There
is one other ingredient that the existentialist believes to be essential for
providing meaning and balance to life – that enables him to feel connected
rather than isolated – and that is the development of ties with others and with
nature.
Although
the existentialist is aware of his capacity for becoming autonomous in his
decision-making, he nevertheless has an interest in going beyond himself in
relating to other beings and nature. He generally feels a need to be concerned
with sociocultural affairs – to be a social critic of sorts.
However,
as Martin Buber (1978-1965) and others have conjectured, it is only when our
relationships with others are fully mutual and egalitarian that we become fully
human, free and balanced human beings.
It
is conjectured that because many of society’s relationships are defined and/or
validated by authoritarian, sociocultural values, men and women have a tendency
to isolate themselves from society by rejecting relationships that are what
Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger and others call inauthentic – relationships
in which one individual becomes an object to another individual or group, rather
than a partner.
The
result of such authoritarian relationships – non-egalitarian relationships – is
that men and women either at the onset fail to develop their humanness or in
the process lose their humanness by becoming automatons rather than persons.
In
varying degrees, individual integrity can be sacrificed at the expense of group
unity and the more authoritarian-oriented – the less democratic – the
partnerships or group is, the greater the risk is of losing one’s integrity –
authenticity – self – from the existential point of view.
Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members is
a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In an existentialist vernacular,
Emerson’s words could be interpreted as: authoritarians sociocultural
institutions inhibit men and women and thus prevent them from developing the
capacities that they indeed possess for becoming fulfilled human beings.
The
existentialist recognizes that man indeed has a choice – that he possesses the
free will for making his own choices.
In
order to exercise that free will, he therefore assumes an obligation to himself
to make a commitment to a project of his own choosing.
By
making such a commitment, the existentialist assumes a responsibility for the
course of his actions and thus his life.
It
is through such a commitment that the individual ultimately finds meaning and
purpose in his life, thereby, in the existential sense, becoming authentic.
There
is indeed anxiety associated with taking the necessary risks in making a
commitment to forge ahead in a new direction. However, the anxiety is
ultimately replaced with feelings of increased self-esteem as the individual
assumes responsibility for his commitment and perseveres in his projects to
their culmination and in his pursuit of loving and mutually nurturing
relationships.
It
is through a process of continual renewal through one’s creativity – through
one’s chosen work – that one finds meaning and fulfillment in life.
While the existentialist’s primary focus is on
living in the present, he is resourceful enough to realize that he cannot
effectively and meaningfully live in the present without a conscious awareness
of past events, which are leaning experiences, and a responsible concern for
how today’s actions will indeed affect his future.
The role of effective parenting is to provide
guidance for children – teaching children how to perform living skills on their
own, while enabling them to make intelligent choices on their own.
Children learn best by imitating – by
attempting to do on their own what they see their parents, surrogate parents,
or other role models do.
By
the time children become adults, they should be proficient in basic living
skills, having been given ample opportunity along the way to make intelligent
choices for themselves, accepting responsibility for the choices they make – to
make their own responsible decisions, thereby not permitting others to do their
thinking for them.
Unfortunately, by the time many people are
adults, they are not equipped with basic living skills, and were never given
the opportunity to make intelligent choices on their own – to make their own
responsible decisions. Such adults resultantly become sheep and are prime
candidates for self-defeating dependency behavior.
As was said, children learn by imitating what
they see adults do. However, they also learn by hearing what adults say to
them, as well as what adults say to one another.
Thus,
the various admonitions that children observe or hear as they are growing up
can have an influence on the choices they make, once they become adults.
Admonitions are those actions and words of caution used to guide or sometimes
coerce others into fulfilling certain obligations or duties, or they are words
used to deter them from engaging in destructive or self-destructive behavior.
An effective parent consistently and carefully
explains to a child logical reasons for performing certain beneficial tasks, as
well as logical reasons for not engaging in self-defeating, risky, destructive
or self-destructive behavior.
However, an inconsistent and ineffective
parent will often try to coerce or manipulate a child with admonitions or
injunctions designed to intimidate the child, by arousing unwarranted fear in
the child. Such admonitions or injunctions might even be fueled with
denigrating and demoralizing epithets, which undermine the child’s self-esteem.
Such admonitions, injunctions, or epithets are nevertheless embedded in the
child’s memory, and unconsciously may affect his ability to make emotionally
and intellectually mature decisions in his relationships with others throughout
his life, thereby promulgating self-defeating behavior.
The parental or surrogate parental injunctions
that are retained in a child’s memory as he evolves into an adult are termed by
psychologist Eric Berne one’s life script. These messages derive from
the parent’s own unresolved conflicts – the parent’s anxiety, anger,
frustration, and unhappiness. Such messages convey to the child what the child
must do in order to obtain recognition or approval from the parent or surrogate
parent.
However, in the process of internalizing these
messages, the child generally assumes that he or she must act in a similar
manner in order to obtain recognition or approval from other people in his or
her life. Such patterns of behavior are thus carried over into adult life, and
may inhibit the individual in making wise choices and decisions in life.
Therefore, in order to effectively live in the
present, it is necessary for the individual to deal with any unfinished
business, thereby becoming consciously aware of the life script he or she grew
up with, and then go about the business of rewriting one’s script. One can
indeed rewrite one’s life script, but it takes a conscious and deliberate
effort to do so. For doing so involves a process of developing new habits of
thinking and behaving.
Let’s now take a look at some examples of a
self-defeating life script.
Do as you’re told! Such a command
perhaps seems typical and relatively innocuous. However, such a command tells
the child not to think for himself or f or herself – to permit others to
dominate him or her and to not think about the consequences of one’s own
actions.
An intelligent parent will offer a logical and
honest reason for undertaking a task, such as: Bush your teeth so that you
will not get a toothache. If you don’t brush your teeth your teeth will
eventually decay and you will get painful gum disease. Worse still, you teeth
may fall out. Then you will have no teeth for chewing your food.
Rather than: Take the trash out and do the
dishes! The intelligent parent might say: The reason I am asking you to take
the trash out is because we all must share responsibilities. We (your parents)
work hard to earn money to buy groceries and to prepare our meals. By taking
the trash out and doing the dishes, you are helping to pull your share of the
workload.
As
I mentioned, children invariably replicate adult behavior. A parent or
surrogate parent may simply tell a child: alcoholic beverages are only safe
for adults. Yet the child perhaps observes that when adults are under the influence
of alcoholic beverages and/or even caffeine beverages they typically engage in
dysfunctional or inappropriate behavior – behavior that endangers their own
lives as well as the lives of other adults and children.
to be continued